FriendFeed’s commenting feature is actually a bit of a pain – because it’s generally one way communication i.e. it aggregates, the discussion is split away from Twitter, a blog, Facebook or wherever the original source is.

- David
4tm-services.com

Adam
bitsandbids.wordpress.com

I think there are different ways of looking at this…as an individual and as a connector between companies and consumers. The latter requires participation in all of the communities where your customers are interacting.

I love your blog Brian.

But I am interested to know what you all think the advantage to being on multiple social network sites is, as opposed to just choosing one and going with that?

Wouldn’t you basically end up having the same network of friends, family and colleagues on all the sites, if you had multiple?

The fact that you can add photos and links means they know what you are thinking, what you are interested in and what you are up to, in reasonably sized chunks.

I’ve just joined Twitter. It’s fun (substantively down to the presence of Stephen Fry, a compulsive tweeter) but it’s just now got FF’s flexibility, and feels like a toy rather than a tool.

I have been working on a concept of creating an uber browser using FriendFeed on FireFox. Thus FFoFF.

Thanks for spreading the word. And tools are popping up to help you sync (discover and add) your friends from other services to twitter.

I agree that Friendfeed is very well positioned to become one of the dominant social aggregators.

However, in order for it to truly distinguish itself from other “closed” aggregators, like Facebook, I’d like to see it become an open platform.

Specifically, I think that Friendfeed should become an OpenID “Provider” which offers it’s users the ability to register a custom Identifier (sub-domain which the user already owns).

OpenID is mildly interesting as a universal login but it is extremely interesting when used as a pre-validated domain which becomes one’s central “social hub” on the internet.

Friendfeed is already 3/4th of the way there already. The “problem” is that we are building our “social hubs” on a domain which someone else (i.e. Friendfeed) owns.

What would be better is if you could register an OpenID “identifier” (e.g. http://openid.briansolis.com) through your Friendfeed account.

If YOU own your “social aggregator” domain you have semi-portability.

Now, of course, many companies, like Friendfeed or Facebook, think that they will increase loyalty through NOT giving you the option of leaving. It’s a false sense of security. Ask Freindster or MySpace.

WordPress.com offers custom domains as an add-on and Google Apps is perhaps the best example. You can “hang” Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, etc. off of a domain of your own.

Were Friendfeed to embrace OpenID for the purpose you suggested both services could be big winners and Friendfeed might demonstrate that social aggregators actually have more value than social networks.

Watch-out Facebook.

There are other reasons why Friendfeed is great. That said, the major influencers still tend to live on Twitter and/or some alternate Twitter platform. So if they’re not having conversations on Friendfeed and engaging there, it will have a problem taking the next step.